Dean of Undergraduate Education Steve Nowicki will be initiating discussion among students and administrators to evaluate Duke Student Government President Paul Slattery's effort to change undergraduate judicial policy.
Slattery, a senior, sent a memorandum to administrators and the Board of Trustees earlier this month. In it, he argues for reinstituting procedural rights into the official written record of judicial policy, "Duke Community Standard in Practice: A Guide for Undergraduates."
Nowicki said he has been in contact with Slattery throughout the process and will work with him to discuss how to evaluate the findings.
"I'm taking it on myself," Nowicki said. "We need to bring this dialogue out into the open and take a careful look at it. It can't be back-burnered-it's of too great an interest to the students."
Slattery said he is confident Nowicki will work effectively to engage student response regarding the proposed policy review.
"I'm happy the administration has gotten involved, and I'm glad that Nowicki has picked it up," Slattery said. "I think he's the right man."
Larry Moneta, vice president for student affairs, said his office will collaborate with Nowicki as the dean begins to organize a response to Slattery's proposals.
"The transparency of our judicial process is critical to its credibility and effectiveness," Moneta wrote in an e-mail. "I have always endorsed open review of our disciplinary system, and the first time Paul brought to my attention his concerns about some elements of our process, I immediately proposed the creation of a student-faculty group to go over the issues and propose changes. Dean Nowicki's partnership in this process provides another objective viewpoint, and I look forward to our collective effort."
The Slattery-penned memo includes a general interpretation of how an undergraduate judicial code should function within the society of an educational system. The document also compares the rights given to Duke students to those at other universities and provides an in-depth analysis of why students deserve certain procedural rights.
Along with his memo, Slattery compiled a spreadsheet that tallies the number of procedural rights included in Duke's judicial policy-a total that Slattery's research found to be lower than that at both peer institutions and Duke during the 1999-2000 academic year.
Nowicki said he has scheduled meetings with administrators within Student Affairs to plan a way to best solicit student opinion regarding Slattery's proposals but does not yet know what form this evaluation will take.
Slattery said the formation of a committee to evaluate the spreadsheet and the ideas in the memo would be an appropriate way to facilitate discussion-as long as the committee's suggestions are acted upon.
"A committee is fine, provided that it's generally representative and has a clear and meaningful mandate," he said. "It could be a sort of paralysis of analysis. A committee goes through and makes a series of recommendations-and then what?"
Slattery said he will be working with Nowicki in the coming weeks to ensure that any changes made to judicial policy come from thorough discussion with students and faculty.
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